


Confidential

by anawitch



Series: Gauntlets and Greaves [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Minor Original Character(s), Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-23 20:19:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anawitch/pseuds/anawitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years after the fall of Beacon Yang and Mercury accidentally take jobs in the same part of town and must try to complete their respective missions without letting the other get in the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a semi-sequel to 'Favours', but all you really need to know is that team RWBY, Emerald, and Mercury ended up working together for a while after the fall of Beacon when Cinder abandoned them, and Yang and Mercury fucked a lot. Hope you enjoy!

He should have hitched a ride. The walk to the village was hardly tiring, but it was so boring - how could anybody live out in the middle of nowhere like that? It would drive him mad. It was already driving him mad. All there was to look at was hills and fields, and a ruined old road not fit for traffic. That’s why the sound of the rapidly approaching car surprised him so much.

He turned just in time to dive out of the way. Colliding with the grass and straw he held his breath and took in his surroundings, mentally noting every feature of the landscape that could be used against him, every ditch that could hinder him, every possible exit, all in a matter of seconds. He had a suspicion as to who his attacker was, and he wasn’t taking any chances, so lying vertically on the floor, feigning injury, he waited for the driver to exit and approach him. In the dark he could just about spy four sets of feet.

When the first set got close he pushed up onto his hands and kicked out his legs, sending his would-be attacker flying. He swayed his weight to the right and swung into the second attacker, too stupid to stay back: he even sent _amateurs._ Honestly, Mercury was insulted. He would have said so, too, if Number Three hadn’t yanked him up by his collar, and if Number Four hadn’t used the opportunity to crash his fist into Mercury’s nose, shockingly painful enough to make his eyes water.

Wasting no time he grabbed onto Number Three’s shoulders and flipped himself over, twisting the man’s arms enough to force him to let go in the process, then sprinted ahead, readying himself to fire; the darkness made it difficult to aim, but made it more difficult to dodge blows in melee, so wasting bullets was his only option.

The first hit the only woman in the team, Number One, and blasted her abdomen. She went flying; they were hardly worth his time, but running wasn’t in his vocabulary, and he was a little sore that one of them had gotten a hit in, so he fired again. At least the rest of them could _dodge,_ but that might have just been them learning quickly from experience. Now that he was on his feet, they couldn’t even touch him - it was a little sad, actually, and had he been the type he might have given them the option to run, because they clearly were not being paid enough to take him in. He rounded up on Number Four when his co-workers lay flat in the grass, but before he could finish him off, a bullet whizzed past his ear. He whipped around and stared in disbelief.

Yang freed her hair from her helmet and hung it on her motorbike. He hadn’t even heard her coming - he had been far too distracted by the hired goons.

“I had it,” he said as she approached, gauntlets extended, but she wasn’t aiming for Number Four. Mercury was grabbed by his collar for the second time that night, only this time he didn’t fight back.

“What are you doing here?” Yang asked, serious and almost frightening.

“I could ask you the same question,” he quipped back, tilting his head as best he could in a way he knew was irritating, but which was second nature to him.

“Good or bad?”

“Subjective,” he said, but her expression told him she wanted more before she’d let him go. Typical. He rolled his eyes. “Within your strict moral code.”

“Did you attack first?”

“Dammit, Yang-..”

Yang let him go.

She turned to the goons, but they had already fled back to the car where the driver was desperately turning his key, needing to be as far away from them as possible. Yang folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at the escaping team but made no attempt to stop them, and Mercury knew that it would be more trouble than it was worth to chase after them now that she was there. The car roared into gear and did a U-turn, quickly disappearing in the dark.

He made a mental note of their registration plate for later.

“They tried to kill me.”

“Oh, cry me a river.”

“If they come back for me…”

She rolled her eyes and returned to her bike without a single moment of consideration for his poor life, buckling her helmet back beneath her chin. Out of the corner of his eye he looked her over, but he couldn’t be pushed to admit that he was checking to see if she was okay; especially not after the stunt she pulled.

It had been four months since they had seen each other. Last time he hadn’t seen her for that long she had her arm chopped off and replaced it with a prosthetic, which was a little more battered now than it had been before, but aside from that she looked good. She always looked good. His annoyance at her interruption began to melt away, in no small part because experience told him Yang could offer him something better than a kill or four anyway.

“Need a lift?” she asked, predictably, as she hopped on the back of Bumblebee. “I’m staying in the village. I guess that’s where you’re heading, for…?”

 “That’s confidential,” Mercury smirked and climbed up behind her, resting his hands on her waist. “Why are you here?”

“Confidential,” Yang said as she started the engine, and she glanced at him over her shoulder and grinned.

Mercury wasn’t the biggest fan of motorbikes – at least, he didn’t generally enjoy hanging off the back of one - but he was a fan of having his hands on Yang, so he could make do with the discomfort. It was cold outside, but he could feel the heat of her through her jacket, and she smelt like gunmetal and perfume. As she sped along the bumpy road he walked his fingers down her hips to the hem of her skirt, stroking the skin above her stocking. He felt her back straighten. It wasn’t that he hadn’t fucked anyone since Yang, but nobody was quite the same.

Just as soon as he had that thought the bike jerked suddenly to the right, and if he hadn’t been holding on with his other hand he might have been dislodged. She turned her head just slightly so that he could see her smirking, and he knew she’d done it on purpose.

“Missed me too much to wait?”

“Parts of you,” he retorted. Yang laughed.

When they finally pulled up to the inn and dismounted she practically pounced on him, cupping his face in her hands and pressing her thumbs into his jaw as she crashed their lips together. It made it difficult to balance, and Mercury spun her around and shoved her into her bike to hold them both up. She hadn’t even taken her helmet off.

He hitched up her skirt and prepared to unzip his pants, but she pulled away suddenly for air. Breathing heavily she pressed her lips to his ear.

“Not here. Inside.”

Removing her helmet seemed to take forever and Mercury was an impatient man. The receptionist eyed them with suspicion as they raced up the stairs, and he knew they weren’t making any friends at the place when he slammed her noisily into the door she stopped outside of. Somehow as their lips moved together Yang managed to find her keys in her bag and took them in her hand, but Mercury dragged her arms up above her head and pinned them there, grinning into her mouth. She was so dishevelled already, hair a mess from the ride and clothes dirty from whatever she was in that part of town for in the first place.

His actions earned him a snicker. “I meant inside the room, asshole,” she murmured, their noses touching. “I can’t get kicked out.”

“Should have been more specific,” he said.

“I’ll hurt you,” she warned, smiling and raising her eyebrows just slightly. Apparently she was quite serious about not fucking in the corridor, because she found her strength and shoved him off of her, and before he could tackle her again she turned the key and dragged him inside.

The door slammed behind them, and as they stripped he tripped and landed on top of her and felt the floor shudder dangerously beneath them. When they were undressed all but her stockings he slid his hands down the nylon and pulled her legs up to his shoulders, positioning himself in between her thighs.

It was always like this when they were reunited. They fucked other people, of course they did, but he’d never met somebody he could be so rough with, who enjoyed it – a sense of urgency pounded through him and he could feel her heartbeat strongly enough to know she felt the same, and neither of them were goading or flirting or teasing now because it had been far too long _._ He pushed inside of her quickly and relished in the noise she made, half way between a choke and a moan. Her head connected with the floor and she pushed out her chest, and there was so much of her he wanted to touch but he settled on her breasts and watched her face as she closed her eyes and bit at her lips.

“Fuck,” he groaned eloquently as his thrusts increased in speed. Her lips cracked into a shaky smirk, broken up by her occasional pants and moans, and when she opened her eyes again she looked at him directly and watched his expression as intently as he watched hers. Determined to make her steady gaze flinch he ran his thumb nail across her nipple then pinched it, hard, as he shoved himself as deep inside of her as he could go. He succeeded: her mouth hung open and she looked up at the ceiling, gasping, and her hand slid down her body past his to touch herself as he pounded her.  
  
There weren’t words to describe how good she looked like that. The sounds that came out of her mouth were gasps and half formed expletives, and the spasms of her climax brought him over the edge, finishing their fun far too soon. He dropped her legs and fell down to his elbows, pressing their lips together clumsily while they were still breathless.  
  
Thirty minutes from meeting to fucking to finishing. That had to be a record. Yang must have had a rough day.

\--

Yang fell to sleep long before he did. Even with the queen sized bed she took up all the room, and every time he moved his head he had a mouth full of hair or a face full of cold metal prosthetic. Somehow there was something endearing about it; as he looked at her in the dark he realised he was almost smiling and swallowed it quickly, because he was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be happy if she found out what he was really doing there.

\--


	2. Chapter 2

_Beep. Beep._

Yang scrunched up her face in the morning sunlight, blinking away the sleep and confusion that always followed waking up in an alien bed. A pair of arms were wrapped around her waist and a leg rested between hers, fully clothed, which was what helped her to remember the night before. Mercury never slept naked; he was always ready to go.

She rolled onto her back and pressed her palm into her forehead, closing her eyes tightly. _God dammit._ Not again.

_Beep. Beep._

It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy to see him, or even that she felt any shame in sleeping with him - by this point they were practically a couple, albeit one in a _very_ open relationship – but the issue was she was supposed to be working, and Mercury always made that very difficult for her. He could be very distracting.

At least he was working too, but whether that was a good or bad thing she couldn’t decide. They had often run into each other on jobs, but never with both of them working at the same time; on the one hand it could keep him out of her hair, but the area was small, and she was more than a little worried about him scaring off her contacts, or worse, killing them.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Gracelessly she smacked her hand into the bedside table and searched for the source of the offensive noise. Her scroll was screaming at her, telling her it was ten in the morning already. Even though he was still asleep, Yang gave Mercury an accusatory look; if she hadn’t bumped into him on the way home she would never have slept in, she lied to herself.

_Beep._

“Yes, okay,” Yang murmured into her scroll very quietly when she answered the call. “What?” She was not a morning person.

“Umber’s in Redwood,” the voice on the other end – Chark - said, deadpan. “You told me to call you if I saw him.”

She peeled Mercury’s arm off of her and slid out of bed, letting out an almighty yawn when her feet hit the floor. “Yeah. Thanks,” she said, but he hung up before she could. Why was it that all the criminals she intimidated into spying for her sounded so angry all the time?

Her clothes lay in a messy pile by the door where they had fallen the night before, and she climbed back into them, supporting herself on the dresser to stop herself from falling in her half-asleep state. The boots were the hardest, and it took her several minutes to squeeze her foot inside. She probably should have taken the time to have a shower, but she was already behind schedule… well, she was only hunting down a criminal. No need to look her best. Or, well, even remotely presentable.

Mercury stirred ever so slightly, reminding Yang that she should probably leave a note lest he think she’d left him with a bill for the inn.  Her scrawl was hardly legible ever since she lost her arm; writing with the prosthetic was a challenge when she couldn’t quite sense the pressure, and more often than not she ended up tearing the paper in half when she tried. When she eventually finished, it read:

“Off to work, see you later.”

Just enough to let him know she wanted him to stick around without being direct about it.

It was probably childish that they still wouldn’t admit they cared about each other. Somehow it felt like it would make things even more complicated.

She put the note on the bedside table and took a second to look him over properly privately in the daylight. Mercury was a year or two older than her, but he looked a lot younger when he slept - kind of cute, actually, enough so to put a smile on her face before she left for the drudgery of the day.

\--

Ten hours later and she was ready to kill Chark. Waiting until she had slammed the door firmly behind her, she removed the useless petty drug dealer from her contact list and with great difficulty resisted throwing her scroll into the floor.

Her entire day had been wasted on waiting around in a café for Umber to show his face, and she hadn’t seen so much as a potential goon. She had the distinctive feeling that Chark had been paid off to mislead her, and though she was furious that he may have betrayed her, she didn’t have the time to chase after him and make him apologise. Yet.

For now she had to focus on him. Umber was becoming notorious for his sale of what he marketed as ‘performance enhancing’ drugs. Apparently they increased the amount of aura a hunter had, which made it particularly dangerous for anxious students who felt they couldn’t graduate without it. Of course, in the best case scenario all it really did was make people sick, but that didn’t seem to deter many. Unfortunately, more than one seventeen year old had overdosed on the stuff, which made capturing him for the authorities a little personal.

She looked around the room. Mercury wasn’t there, and when she checked her note she saw that he had added to it, simply writing “same” in his own scribbly handwriting. That was fine – she needed a shower, which again would be an easier task without him there. Though the water pressure was dire, the water itself was hot, and she felt herself calm down a little beneath it. It was all fine. She had other contacts, ones that Umber couldn’t possibly know anything about, and if all else failed she could probably get Mercury to help her scout out the area… at least if she promised a reward.

Once she was done cleaning up, she checked her scroll. There was a new message:

 _From: Rubes_

_Hey sis! :D you didn’t check in last night. Just making sure everything’s ok! I love you! xxx_

Yang rubbed her face and sighed. Damn, she did forget. Quickly she typed back:

 _To: Rubes_

_Got caught up with work. I’m fine, just been busy. You better be fine too! Tell Blake and Weiss I said hi! Love you too, miss you x_

Now that they were older, not all of their missions needed all of them together all the time. Her uncle had actually given her this one - apparently she was good at tearing her way through the underground- and the rest of her team were dealing with a ‘severe’ grimm problem threatening an industrial area which probably wasn’t all that bad, but sometimes the workers there liked to see bands of hunters to make them feel safer. Yang was just happy that she didn’t have to worry about them too much while they were apart. They were big girls now – they could handle it. Still, she made a point of keeping in contact with them at least every other day, because old habits die hard.

Work finished for the day (or at least, there was nothing more she could think to do until she got another call), she then had the task of deciding how to spend the rest of her evening. Mercury was still out, and she had no idea when he’d be back.

… But there was a bar downstairs…

\--

“Strawberry sunrise,” she said when she took a seat, smiling sweetly at the barmaid. It wasn’t too busy – just a few people she could easily identify as regulars (though she had never been there before), sitting alone in various spaces around the room, nursing their drinks in contemplative silence. It wasn’t the sort of place she would usually spend her nights, but the village was small, and entertainment was limited.

The shockingly pink drink was placed in front of her, and she sipped it through a straw.

“Neat arm. You a huntress?” a man asked, looking her up and down as she chewed her straw, and she tensed. Whenever somebody mentioned her arm she did, even though it had been years since the incident with Adam. She hoped she would grow out of it. The man was older than her and a little scraggly looking, in a coat just a bit too tattered and worn down boots. Maybe he was a traveller. Yang eventually gave him a completely polite, completely false smile and nodded her head.

“Yeah. I can always tell,” he continued, ordering a drink for himself. “My auntie was. Always off on missions and stuff. Died, of course. Most hunters do.”

“They sure do,” Yang responded in a disarmingly cheerful tone - an attempt to make him rethink his conversation strategy.

“I miss her. Back then you only had what you were born with, you know?” He took a glug from his glass, which contained a bitter smelling amber liquid. “Not that I think you’re struggling. I mean, look at you…” and he gave a sleazy wink that was more amusing than creepy to somebody who dealt with drunks all the time. “But, you know, not everybody was good enough naturally, and those were just the breaks. A shame if you ask me.”

Yang nodded along as he spoke, absent minded. They weren’t great at making cocktails here – she could hardly taste any alcohol at all until she got to the bottom, which made the dregs feel like a shot.

“I heard about this stuff. Makes your aura last longer, makes you invincible until it wears off. Bet you wish you’d had that, huh?” he nodded towards her arm, and Yang was suddenly conflicted: let him keep talking and see what he knew, or punch him into the ground for the audacity of pointing out her disability. In the end her sense won out, for sudden anger had definitely cost her in the past.

“Maybe,” she responded, keeping her emotions in check, twirling her straw around her glass. “What is it?”

“You heard of Aux?"

Yang tilted her head, feigning innocent confusion. He lowered his voice.

“Tell you what. You give me your number, and I’ll send you a text when I’ve got some. You here long?”

“A few weeks,” Yang lied, but she could always extend her trip if she couldn’t get any other leads. The man took out his scroll.

Just as she opened her mouth to read out the digits, she felt a pair of hands touch her shoulders and spin her around on the stool. Ready to fight, she pushed herself up and glared at-

Mercury.

In a flash he grabbed her thighs and lifted her up onto the bar, crashing his lips into hers possessively. It was so fast and unexpected, and it took her too long to realise what was happening, and by the time she had the sense to break away and catch her breath she realised her would-be lead was making a hasty exit from the inn. She shoved Mercury off of her.

“What is your _problem!?_ ” she exclaimed, giving him another push as she spoke for good measure. That irritating smirk was back on his face and he raised his eyebrows, completely oblivious to the real reason for her anger.

“Oh, come on. He’s not your type.”

“I wasn’t-..” she began, voice high pitched, until she realised how much attention they were drawing. With a glance behind her at the suddenly-too-busy barmaid she slid down off the counter, hissing the remainder of her sentence. “I wasn’t trying to fuck him. I was _working._ ”

“With a strawberry sunrise?”

“He had information!”

“Well, shit! Sorry!” he hissed back sarcastically.

Yang raced outside and looked up and down the street, but of course the drug dealer had scarpered, made nervous from all the sudden attention. She was trying to stay calm, but she couldn’t help it – she planted her fist into the brickwork and watched it dent and crack. Twice in one day.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you told me why you were here,” Mercury chimed, leaning back next to the new hole in the wall. Clearly he thought the whole thing was terribly amusing.

“This shouldn’t have happened at all,” Yang responded, punctuating her words with a punch to Mercury’s head, but it was half hearted, and he easily moved out of the way and let her ruin the wall even further. She clenched her teeth and glared at him. “Don’t let your jealousy get in the way of my work.”

“Jealousy?” he scoffed. “You looked like you needed a rescue.”

“I _never_ need a rescue. Besides, you couldn’t have just left it at the shoulder tap?”

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

She sighed and buried her face in her hands, frustrated and exhausted. The mission was supposed to be easy. Qrow would never judge her if it all went to shit, but she hated feeling as if she was incapable, even if it was other people’s stupidity that caused her to fail.

To her surprise Mercury took her hands from her face to her sides and kissed her again, so softly she couldn’t even be angry about it, and, actually, she did feel a little better about things once he pulled away and peered down at her with a curious expression on his face. Quickly that expression morphed into one of upmost cockiness as he cupped her ass with both hands and moved his mouth to her ear.

“How about I make it up to you?”

“With no benefit to yourself, I’m sure,” Yang deadpanned, though she didn’t move him. Actually, it gave her an idea…

“You can buy my drinks for the rest of the night. All of them.”

\--


	3. Chapter 3

Mercury’s eyebrow’s rose when she ordered two bottles of vodka and a couple of shot glasses, but obediently he paid anyway, no doubt thinking that amount would be sure to get her into bed again later. Honestly… experience told her he was probably right, but she had a different, more important plan to put into action first.

They took seats together at opposite sides of an empty booth. The bar had become a little busier in their absence – apparently two hunters arguing with a drug dealer wasn’t bad for business when it was the only entertainment in town – but it was still quiet enough; just a low murmur of conversation, and the distant sound of music.

Yang poured two shots and slid one across the table. Mercury caught it before it fell off the edge and spilled in his lap.

“I thought I was buying _your_ drinks?”

“We’re going to play a game,” Yang said, keeping her face straight.

Predictably he cocked his head in curious interest. After knowing Mercury for nearly six years she knew exactly how to get his attention and how to get what she wanted out of him, though he probably thought the reverse was true, too.

“Every time one of us takes a shot, we can ask the other a question. Answer completely honestly.”

Mercury snorted. “What are we, 17?”

“Scared I’ll get too much out of you?” she asked, egging him into it. “You’ve met my uncle… I’ve had the training. It’s in my blood.”

“You never met my dad,” he smiled wryly, knocking back the first shot with ease. “What are you doing here?” he asked with a shit-eating grin when the glass clinked back against the table.

Yang scowled. “I can’t tell you.”

“Well… that ends that game quickly,” he said with mock disappointment. She narrowed her eyes.

“I’m looking for somebody,” she said, flashing a false smile. She took her shot and swallowed it quickly, so she didn’t have to taste it. “Where have you been all day?”

“Did you miss me?” he cooed.

“It’s my turn to ask the questions,” she smiled as she filled the glasses again.

“Fine. I went looking for the car from last night. I found it in Silvertree."

“What did you do to them?” 

“Ah, ah,” he chided. “My turn.”

A few shots in and Yang knew that Mercury was up to no good, which was exactly what she had feared and completely to be expected. His answers became cagier and cagier, especially when she asked him who he had been hired by and where Emerald was; he simply responded with “a friend”, and claimed Emerald was busy with a different job back home. He too was searching for somebody, and she didn’t need to ask what for – she was relieved to know Mercury hadn’t killed his attackers, or that he was at the very least lying about it to stop any arguments. As for what she revealed, she let him know it was her uncle who asked her to do the job as a favour, and that it was related to incidents in Vale, though she refused to go into any more detail on that even when he claimed she was cheating. He had probably inferred that it had something to do with drugs – she knew despite the façade he was pretty damn smart, and in retrospect the man they had scared off was quintessentially drug dealer material. Hopefully him knowing that much wouldn’t be a problem.

Maybe he wouldn’t even remember, because Yang was (predictably) handling the drink far better than him. Though he might have challenged her claim to inherited alcohol-resistance, she knew in reality Mercury didn’t drink all that much. He brought up his alcoholic father in passing all the time; she suspected there was a little bit of fear there, actually, that drinking alone would bring him out in him, but fortunately she was also aware that he had no issue drinking with her or Emerald, and they had done a number of times whenever she went to visit. Yang on the other hand had spent a lot of time the past few years drinking alone. She definitely had the upper hand.

He slumped against the table and rested his chin in his hand, throwing back another shot. The first bottle was empty, but there was plenty more where that came from. Actually, she had already gotten everything she could out of him, and she doubted he had any more work related questions for her either. Now it was just their mutual aversion to losing forcing them to continue.

“Why d’you always come back to me?” he asked, and she was unsure if it was supposed to be flirtatious, teasing, or serious. Either way the question caught her off guard.

She ran her finger around the rim of her glass and thought on it.

“I have a good time with you,” she said carefully after a few moments, which wasn’t a lie, but wasn’t quite the full truth either. She never even knew how much she’d missed him until she saw him again. Being with him was exciting, and more than that, it made her happy, most of the time. Not that she would ever admit that. Mercury didn’t respond, so she leant forwards on her elbows and whispered loudly: “Plus, the sex is okay.”

He laughed, and she could hear the alcohol straining his throat. “Okay?”

Yang shrugged her shoulders and smiled. Before he could make some bold comment about his sexual prowess that she’d have to take him down for, she took her shot.

“Did you miss me?”

Taking his glass in his hand he answered a quick “yes” and downed it quickly before she could tease him. She wouldn’t have – she was actually kind of touched by his drunken honesty, but that didn’t last long, of course, when she heard Mercury’s next question.

“What’s it about me that turns you on?” he asked, grinning before he could even get the words out.

Well, she should have expected that.

“I’m not talking dirty to you here,” Yang responded, but she couldn’t hide the smirk threatening to show at the thought of it. Perhaps she had had more to drink than she thought.

“I guess I win, then…”

“Oh, no," she laughed. “You lost ages ago. Look at you – you can’t even hold your head up.”

Mercury sat up straight and folded his arms, cocking an eyebrow and waiting in smug silence.

It was happy hour and there were people all around, but nobody was paying them any mind except the odd glance in their direction. At the very least, nobody was listening to them… and if they did, did she really care?

No. Of course she didn’t.

Leaning in closer Yang lowered her voice.

“You’re so smug… you always fight me for control even though we both know you only really get off when I win, and in the end, when you’re about to come and forget to be an asshole, and you get so desperate and curse and moan for real instead of just to piss me off...” she trailed off, judging his expression.

“Yeah?” he encouraged, and Yang grinned.

“You never hold back no matter how many times we’ve fucked that day, and you have to touch or bite me when you come, and if you can’t I can feel how much you need to.”

“Go on,” Mercury said, shifting inconspicuously in his seat.

“I love how your hands feel on me, your teeth, how your cock feels inside of me,” she said, lowering her voice into a quiet whisper, seeing how far she could go before Mercury couldn’t take it anymore. “But mostly what turns me on that I know how much this is turning _you_ on because you can’t stop staring at my lips.”

His eyes snapped up and he smirked, caught in the act. He gave a lazy shrug of his shoulders and leaned back, looking at the other customers in a way that was nearly casual.

Yang took a shot.

“How hard are you right now?” she grinned, enjoying her teasing.

“Getting there,” he admitted, though she suspected he was underplaying it by how fast he chased his words with another drink. “What are you thinking?”

“That I don’t think we’re going to make it upstairs…” She took another shot and spilt some, so she made a show of running her thumb over her lips and sucking off the alcohol, keeping her eyes locked onto his. “What do you want to do to me?”

“Fuck you in the bathroom,” he said without pause, and he jumped out of his seat and led the way. Yang laughed out loud and left the remainder of the second bottle on the table for somebody else to have fun with, swaying a little as she walked, but she wasn’t stumbling as Mercury was in his hurry to get to relative privacy. At least _she_ had some _dignity_ on her journey to fuck in a disabled toilet.

She couldn’t help but giggle when he grabbed hold of her hard enough to bruise, slamming her into the wall like he wanted to hurt her. It was an interesting turn of events – usually it was the other way around, him pushing her buttons until she snapped, and she kind of liked being the one to rile him up. His teeth sunk into her neck and his hands were hot beneath her jacket, and she was too tipsy to keep track of them as they grasped and scratched and tensed over her skin. When she returned the favour, cupping the front of his pants and rubbing through them roughly, his forehead hit her shoulder and he groaned in what sounded like agony.

“That really got you going, huh?”

“Fuck off,” he choked out.

“I hardly said anything.” She brought his head up and scraped her teeth across the shell of his ear, having more fun seeing him squirm than she had in months. “I bet I could make you come in your pants…”

Apparently the thought of that humiliation was too much for Mercury. He shoved her hard into the sink behind her, and while the room span he twisted her onto her front, bending her over until her chest touched the freezing faucets.

Shorts and underwear round her knees in seconds, his hands pinned her by her shoulder and small of her back, and even before he pushed inside she could feel him shaking. It felt urgent, desperate, all the things she loved about fucking him; so good she couldn’t even care that he thought he was in control. She reached back to find the nape of his neck to dig her nails into, to tug at the hair there and keep him pressed close into her back.

He spat out expletives with every breath and thrust, and she could hear the drunkenness in his voice clearly, now, and could feel the dizzying effect in herself, too. It made the experience messy; they tripped and missed each other’s mouths, and pulled hair a little too hard, and moaned louder than they should have even though they could hear the customers outside, but it was still so _good_ and sorely needed after the day she had had.

She dragged his hand down to her clit because he was far too drunk to do it himself and she wanted it badly, even if she would end up doing all the work. She didn’t care; she just had to get off, and to get him off, and to torment him about it later. It didn’t take long: she ground into his hand and threw back her head, and felt his teeth bite over her pulse as he leaned down over her.

“Fuck, Merc,” she moaned, and his hips gave a tell-tale stutter before she forgot to think and climaxed with a hoarse scream. He sped up, pushing into her rougher and faster, and she was almost too sensitive for it. “Come on,” she urged, grabbing back to dig her nails into his hip. “Merc!”

When she said his name a second time she heard him yell out something incomprehensible and he came, face still buried in her hair and neck. She didn’t give him time to recover and turned around to kiss him, to mess up his hair and hold him close as they caught their breath. The taste of vodka was still strong on his tongue.

So, he liked hearing her say his name. That really shouldn’t have surprised her.

She couldn’t breathe for giggling when they exited to the sight of the angry receptionist, who chided them for being in the disabled toilets while prissily avoiding all mention of what they had clearly been doing in there. His face when she extended her prosthetic arm in unison with Mercury pulling up his pant leg was perhaps the best thing she had ever seen; the poor guy had no idea how to handle two horny, disabled hunters fucking in the public toilets, and was obviously not paid enough to do more than give them a warning. They were still laughing over it well into the night, until they stumbled into bed and finally passed out, and she didn't even remember why she'd challenged him to the stupid game in the first place.

\--

She was not laughing when she woke up to Mercury thrashing in his sleep, panting like he had ran a marathon and slick with sweat. It was the first time she had seen him having a nightmare; was it an effect of the alcohol? She didn’t know what to do. Eventually her still-tipsy brain told her to elbow him roughly and falsify sleep, so that he didn’t have to know she knew. It worked; he stilled and caught his breath, and she cuddled up to him in her ‘sleep’ and went back under for real when she felt him gently stroke his fingers through her hair, cheek pressed to her forehead.

\--


	4. Chapter 4

Mercury had already left when she finally dragged herself out of bed, and she would have been lying if she said she wasn’t a little concerned about him after the night before, but he was a big boy and could look after himself. She was sure he could.

A glance at her scroll told her she had three missed calls from her contact in Silvertree. The room span dizzyingly, dangerously; it had been a long time since she’d had a hangover so bad, and she had nobody to blame but herself.

It didn’t matter. She still had to work. She just hoped for his sake that Umber was well hidden today, because she had the distinct feeling that she would probably end up throwing up on him if she had to fight, and that would just be embarrassing for the both of them. She made herself look somewhat presentable and downed an entire bottle of water in one gulp, and prayed she’d make it through the day.

This time she was going to speak to her contact face to face. It was easier to tell if they were lying that way, and the added threat of her presence should scare them into giving her what she wanted, even if she did look like death. Hopefully that made her scarier? Mauv certainly looked scared when he found her outside his front door, arms folded and eyebrow perked.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, nerves obvious in his voice.

“I missed your calls! So I thought I’d come and pay you a visit.” She smiled, but it was her threateningly-sweet smile that made grown men stutter.

His house was small and messy, exactly like you’d expect from a part-time smuggler. There didn’t appear to be anything of value, just piles and piles of bizarre items that must have been left over from his work. She took a seat on the arm of his sofa, too cautious of the mess to risk sitting in something on the actual seat.

“So! What’ve you got for me, Mau?”

He stood around, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Nervous, then. Had Umber already paid him a visit and warned him not to talk? Or to lie to her? She tilted her head, maintaining her aggressively friendly persona.

“Oh. Uh…” his eyes shot to the window and Yang pulled back her prosthetic, flexing it, reminding him that she could take him down if he tried to run. Mauv gulped. “He… was here, earlier. Wanted me to take a shipment, but he didn’t give me the address yet.”

“That seems weird. Why would he ask if you could do it if he wasn’t going to give you half the information?”

Mauv shrugged. His eyes kept shooting back to the window. Yang narrowed her eyes.

“How long ago was he here? Did he tell you to lie to me?”

“No!” he said, taking an absent minded step back. “I mean… he told me not to talk to you. Two hours ago?”

She hummed thoughtfully and stared out the window. Mauv wasn’t like Chark – he was a terrible liar, so much so that it was a real miracle he’d been doing his job for as long as he had. Perhaps it was because he was so mousey looking; nobody took him seriously enough to consider he might be involved in some seriously illegal activities.

With a stretch she pushed off of the sofa and patted him on the shoulder when she left (not at all amused by his flinching at the contact). Two hours wasn’t all that long ago, and it was highly likely that if he had bothered to visit Mauv in person he had more work to attend to in Silvertree. Unfortunately Mauv was her only contact there, so she would have to search manually, and that was going to take some time. She looked skywards and sighed.

And it was a good thing she did, because as her eyes lifted to the clouds she caught the sight of silver rapidly disappearing over the apartment rooftops.

What the _fuck._

She took out her scroll.

“It’s not what you think,” Mercury answered the second time she called, presumably when he was out of harm’s way, confirming that it was in fact exactly what she thought.

“Are you following me?”

“Come on, Blondie, I’m too hungover for this.”

“Are you _following_ me?” she repeated, seething with rage.

“Just crossing paths.” Yang scoffed, and he sighed down the scroll. “It’s not all about you. Obviously we have some mutual contacts. I’m-..” and he paused, holding his breath. When he spoke again his voice was hardly a whisper. “Got to go.”

He hung up and Yang resisted the urge to smash her scroll into the floor, because she didn’t believe him for a second. Now she was sure he knew what she was doing – he’d seen whose house she’d entered, had seen her talking to the drug dealer in the inn, and had he been in to speak to Mauv first? Was that why he was staring out the window? That she didn’t know what any of it meant frustrated her to no end.

When she returned to the inn after a full day searching Silvertree for any sign for Umber with absolutely no luck she tried Mercury’s scroll again, but it was switched off, and he didn’t return all night.

Was she supposed to be angry or worried?

\--

It couldn’t get in the way of work. The next morning she finally slept off the hangover, woke up early, and even had time for a shower. Whatever Mercury was doing was none of her business until it became her business, and she was determined to finish hers before that could happen.

If he was even okay.

She shook the thought from her mind.

Greenbranch was the last town in the area, and unless hers and Qrow’s intel had been entirely wrong (which was seeming more and more likely as the day progressed) it was the only other place that Umber could be staying. All day she walked around the inns, the bars, the cafes, repeating the same questions, asking if anybody had seen her missing friend. That tended to work better than asking around for a criminal.

Unfortunately nobody was biting. Once again she was ready to give up for the day, and she seriously considered calling Qrow to politely check that he was sure he wasn’t sending her on a wild goose chase, but as she exited the inn she took one last look around the square and saw him.

Umber sprinted past her, almost into her, and she couldn’t believe her luck. She actually froze for a moment before she realised she would have to chase after him. He was fast, small and lithe for a man who seemed to have so much power and influence, but there was no way in hell she was letting him go again now. Yang pushed forwards with all the energy she had, eternally grateful for the full night’s sleep, propelling herself over walls and hedges as he lead her out of the town and into the fields between it and Redwood.

It didn’t occur to her to wonder why he was running. She could only assume he had noticed her and had some safe place somewhere up ahead, and that he underestimated her speed. Unfortunately for him, he seemed to forget that Yang had more than cardio to rely on: she extended her arm and locked onto him as she ran, firing a shell into the back of his knee. He stumbled and tripped, and it gave her all the time she needed to close the distance between them.  

Panting, holding the stitch in her side, she came to a stop an inch away and cocked an eyebrow at him on the floor.

“Nice to finally meet you, Umber,” she said, keeping her gauntlets trained on him. “Do you know how many people I had to go through to find you?”

All the fight seemed to have drained out of him; he looked bad, actually, and she realised that his cheek was bleeding freely. It must have been from the fall, but she knew he was a hunter once himself. His aura should have protected him. Yang tried to keep the puzzlement out of her expression, to keep cool to keep him nervous, but she was suddenly very aware that she might well be in a dangerous situation.

“Are you with him?” he asked, exhausted.

She didn’t have time to wonder who ‘he’ was, because in the next second he was there, grinning his shit eating grin, sauntering over to them.

“Should have seen this one coming,” Mercury said. _Oh._

“Are you kidding me?”

“Come on, at least thank me for doing the hard part,” he winked at her, but his expression fell serious when he looked down at Umber. “You must have really pissed a lot of people off if she’s after you too…” he said.

Yang rubbed her face. That explained a lot, and Mercury was right: they really should have seen this one coming. What were the chances of two wanted criminals hiding out in the same part of town? It sounded as if Mercury had no idea what Umber had actually doing, which made sense; half his thing when picking up contracts was asking for as little information as possible.

It took her too long with the day’s bizarre events to realise that the other half of his thing was assassinating them.

Mercury aimed his greaves at Umber’s head and fired. Yang kicked his leg out from underneath him and watched as the bullet went wide.

He thumped to the floor with a surprised groan and Yang turned on him, ready to fight.

“What the _fuck?_ ” he shouted out, flipping back onto his feet. He fell into battle stance too, too smart to turn his back on her to finish the job. “Don’t use my own moves against me!”

“I need him alive!” Neither of them fired.

“He’s a bad guy!”

“You’re a bad guy!”

“That’s why whenever somebody tries to assassinate me I don’t hold a grudge!”

As if in response to his comment there was a sudden explosion that sent them both hurtling through the air. The impact from the landing knocked the breath out of her, and she tasted blood and grass in her mouth. Her ears rang, her sight was blurred, and she grabbed blindly to try and find Umber or Mercury in the smoke that remained.

Her hand found Mercury’s and she pushed herself up still gasping, looking him over. He lay dazed and groaning, but he seemed intact, so she turned to face-

Nothing. Umber was gone.

“Fuck!” she exclaimed, grabbing onto her hair because there was nothing to punch. How was that possible!? How could he have escaped so fast? Mercury sat up slowly and scowled at her, wiping blood from his lips. The explosion must have shattered both of their auras, and even if they had any idea where Umber had ran too, neither of them were in any position to fight.

“We really should have taken his weapon,” Mercury said, voice hoarse.

“That was his weapon!?”

“Yeah. Collapsible grenade launcher. That’s why I had to keep out of his sight all night until I could get a clean shot. Thanks for ruining that, by the way.” He found his way to his feet unsteadily. “Do you have any idea how much this job paid?”

“Do you have any idea how many people his drug has killed?” Yang shot back. “If we don’t get him alive we don’t get to find out how it’s made to find a way to save the kids it’s destroying from the inside.”

“How is that our problem? They shouldn’t take the fucking drugs then, should they?”

When Yang’s legs were strong enough and her ears stopped singing she heaved herself back towards the village, feeling the ache of exhaustion washing over her. It didn’t mean she would stop arguing, however; the entire journey back the pair screamed at one another, calling each other every name under the sun and occasionally stopping to exchange blows.

But Yang was the one who got to the bedroom first, and she slammed the door in Mercury’s face. She heard him yell out in frustration and bang his fists against the wood but she ignored him, changing out of her singed and sodden clothes. One look in the mirror and she could see that her lip was split, that her skin was red and blue, and she wasn’t sure which were from Umber and which were from Mercury along the journey back.

Fuck him. Fuck him for making her mess up and for having the audacity to blame it on her. Fuck him for still assassinating. Fuck him for not understanding why Umber needed to be taken in alive.

Fuck Mercury.

\--


	5. Chapter 5

“Well, keep me updated.”

\--

“No? Are you sure? Thanks anyway.”

\--

“We ran from Greenbranch-.. no, I didn’t see which way he went. We were in a field. I don’t-.. okay, well, call me.”

\--

Yang gritted her teeth and pressed her scroll into her forehead once she had exhausted her contact list. She had been so close… a few more seconds and she could have had Umber cuffed and half way back to Qrow.

“Are you going to let me in yet?” Mercury’s voice was muffled through the door, and she could just see him in her mind’s eye sitting with his back against it, tired and sulking.

“No,” she responded, firmly.

“I need the money!”

“No. People _need_ help. You _want_ the money.” It was the same old argument. 

Mercury huffed with anger. “Same difference.”

Realistically she knew she couldn’t leave him out in the corridor all night, and she knew that he was too stubborn to leave and get his own room. She also knew that he didn’t purposely mess it up for her – he just had his own objective, and at least if he was taking hits he was doing it to people who deserved it, even if it was the worst possible way to deal with the issue. Still, she was mad, and leaving him waiting outside a little longer was what he deserved.

“I’ll give you my contacts,” he said after minutes of silence passed by. “And I won’t kill him. At a _great_ personal loss.”

_Hmm._

Yang crossed the room and opened the door. Just as she imagined he had been leant against it, but he must have heard her coming, because unfortunately she didn’t manage to get him to fall backwards. He gave her a sour look and entered the bedroom, finally able to change out of his filthy clothes himself.

She let him sort himself out, clean off the blood and sweat, and settle down on the bed before she made him make good on his offer.

“Contacts, then,” she demanded, holding out her hand for his scroll.

“I have a better idea,” he said. His irritated expression faded so quickly she knew he had been planning this outside, and she closed her eyes and furrowed her brow and tried not to kick herself for not seeing this coming. “You’re costing me a lot of money.” He folded his arms behind his head. “How about you earn those names and numbers?”

“You’re joking, right?”

He cocked an eyebrow in response and lounged, not saying another word. Yeah, of course he wasn’t joking.

She knew she didn’t have to. If she said no, he’d shrug his shoulders and go to sleep, and she could probably quite easily figure out the code to his scroll given enough time. She doubted he would even try and stop her. But though she was certain it was unhealthy, anger and arousal had somehow become intrinsically linked in her mind, and honestly there were worst ways to get it out of her system. Actually, it gave her an idea. Something that would get her those contacts, work out some of her frustrations, and maybe even wipe that smug look off his face.

“Close your eyes,” she said, using that same sweet smile she did when she was about to punch someone through a wall. Mercury did as he was told, unbearably pleased with himself that he was getting his own way, and she had to hold back a snicker of her own as she reached into her bag and pulled out the handcuffs that _should_ have been around Umber’s wrists.

Straddling him she dragged his arms up behind his head, and in a flash she snapped the cuffs closed around them and the bars of the headboard. Mercury’s eyes shot open and locked on hers, startled for a moment before apparently deciding he was okay with it with a self-satisfied shrug. The brief moment of confusion did prompt her, however.

“You remember our-..?”

“Vytal. I know.”

Well, it had been four months. He rolled his eyes like he still thought it was ridiculous to need a ‘safeword’, and he might be right that they never had and had never needed to use it, but as they grew closer and older Yang became very aware of the damage they could do to each other without one as a failsafe. She did care about him. Most of the time.

“You’ll regret this,” she said, tugging his pants all the way off and unzipping his jacket. Still sat in his lap she stripped herself down to her underwear and knee-highs. His tongue wet his lips.

“Doing well so far,” Mercury said, lips twisted into a cocky smirk. “Still not sure it’s worth the amount of money I’ll lose, giving them to you.”

She grinned and slid down his body, kissing across his chest until she reached his naval. His stomach was taut with anticipation, and she dragged her teeth across his hip bones and watched as his cock twitched. She would get to that later - for now she took the time to tease, breathing over it and moving her hands up his thighs, bringing them close but not enough to give him any satisfaction.

It took no time at all for him to get hard – it was rare for Yang to give head, even though she had no objections to it, because fucking was usually a rushed, spur of the moment thing where foreplay was timewasting, but she knew she was good at it. Scratch that, fantastic. Her hand – her real one – ghosted over Mercury’s cock, hardly touching him at all. He had only been handcuffed to the bed for five minutes and already he was fidgeting impatiently beneath her thighs, though to his credit he managed to keep stubbornly quiet. Well, she had to change that.

Lowering her head she stuck out her tongue and licked from the base of his cock to its head as painfully slowly as she could possibly manage. When she glanced up he was watching, jaw tense and firmly set, like maybe he had come to the sudden realisation of how bad an idea it might have been to suggest Yang work for his information.

“You’ve got to get me off if you want it,” Mercury clarified, tension obvious in his voice. She snickered against his skin and he jumped, twisting his hips.

“How about you tell me, and then I let you come?”

Mercury scoffed and looked up at the ceiling. Stubborn bastard. She dipped back down, took him in her mouth and bobbed her head, hollowing out her cheeks. He swore and hit his head off the board behind him at the unexpected pressure and change in pace, his breath quickening until it came out as a constant groan, and having fucked him so many times before it was too easy to recognise his tells; the way he fell silent and bit his tongue when he was seconds away, the way the thrusts of his hips became shallow and irregular… as soon as he was almost there, thrusting up into her mouth and pulling at his restraints, she pulled herself off of him and wiped her lips to the sound of him yelling.

“Fuck! Shit,” he spat, and he kicked out his legs until she climbed back onto his thighs and held him down, grinning wickedly.

“Ready to tell me?” she asked, leaning down over him and kissing along his jaw and throat. She could feel his heartbeat there, drumming.

“Not until you make me come,” he insisted through shallow pants.

“I don’t have any more leads to follow. This could take all night,” she said, mockingly sad about it.

Mercury scrunched his eyes closed and caught his breath. “You don’t have the patience,” he said, eventually, letting the smirk creep back onto his face.

She smiled and took the challenge, keeping her mouth on his throat as she pulled her hand up and down his cock, slowly. She loved feeling the breath in his throat as she edged him closer, so much so that it was difficult to keep from rutting against his thigh. It was only when he couldn’t contain his moans any further that she gave into the urge, rocking against him for relief and quietly panting herself, more aroused by the act than she’d expected to be, given the day she’d had.

“Come on,” he groaned out. “Come on…”

“Don’t be stupid.” She took away her hand and bit down, feeling him shake and buck beneath her. Now he was whining, thrashing; it took him three minutes to stop, to come down again, and Yang spent that time leaning over him, watching his face with a grin.

“Ready to tell me now?” she asked, smug.

“Fuck you,” he laughed out shakily. “I can feel how wet you are. You need to get off too.”

“Yeah,” Yang agreed, “but I can do this.”

She fell back on her elbows and trailed her hand down her stomach, spreading her legs over his thighs. He groaned low and irritated and thrusted upwards into the air as much as he could with her pressure on him. He hadn’t been wrong; she could feel how wet she was through her underwear, and she was definitely impatient. At least when it came to her own orgasm.

Actually, she was sort of regretting cuffing Mercury, because she really could have used his hands on her now, and his mouth she needed for the whole telling her his contacts thing. Fortunately she’d worked herself up enough for getting herself off to be an easy job only made easier by the look on his face as he stared down at her hand under her panties, watching the movement beneath as she fingered and rubbed herself quickly. It didn’t take her long; when she came she held on tight to Mercury’s arm and fell forwards, moaning and gasping more than she needed to, taking too long to recover, making him squirm.

“Violet,” he croaked. “He’s been using her bar in Greenbranch. Now, take off-..”

“Which bar?” she asked.

“Something bush, I can’t remember.”

“The Holly Bush?”

“Sure, whatever. Now-..”

“You said contacts, not contact.”

“For fuck’s-..!”

But she grabbed his cock and jerked him off, and she could feel how close he was the moment she touched him, could hear it in the strangled gasp he made as she cut off his sentence. It only took a minute for him to collapse into expletives, kicking and lifting his hips up from the bed, and this time when Yang stopped she was worried he might alert reception, and they were up four floors up. She swallowed the sounds he made and kissed him passionately until they stopped, and even through his exhaustion he kissed her back like it might make her change her mind and finish him off.

“Who hired you? A competitor? A former colleague?”

“Current colleague,” Mercury said, finally desperate enough to volunteer information. Yang grinned and carried on stroking him gently, encouraging him. “He… ah, shit. Thyme. I’ll give… ah… give you his number…”

She sped up and kissed him on the cheek, but just as he was about to finally get his release for the fourth time, she slowed down again and frowned thoughtfully. He could hardly form a sentence through his gasps.

“Yang, shit, _please._ ”

“What’s the code for your scroll?”

“Fucking… it’s 1212. I can’t- please. _Please._ ”

As nice as it was to hear him begging, she decided she had worked him up enough; she had access to his scroll, after all, and could take any numbers she saw fit once they were finished. There was no way he’d last long enough inside her to get her off again, so she descended down his body once more and swallowed his cock, taking him as far as she could. His cries came out in a chorus of _pleases’_ and _fucks’,_ and this time when he thrashed and thrust into her mouth she let him until finally he came so hard she had no choice but to swallow it as it hit the back of her throat. She kept her lips and tongue wrapped around him, moving slowly until he came down, flopping back into the bed, boneless.

When he was done she took his scroll out of his pants pocket on the floor, typed in the code, and went through his address book, forwarding the relevant details to herself. Mercury was still catching his breath by the time she had found what she wanted. She felt pretty proud of herself.

Yang climbed back onto the bed and released him from the handcuffs. He flexed his wrists, uncharacteristically quiet.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

After a moment he looked at her and furrowed his brows. “I can’t believe you called _me_ the bad guy. You’re _evil._ ”

“And you’ve never come so hard in your life,” she laughed.

With that he pulled her down on top of him and kissed her lazily, exhausted from the lack of sleep, the fighting, the sex. When they pulled away for breath she tugged the duvet over them and curled up beside him, dragging his arm over her waist the way they usually woke up together, and fell into an easy sleep, optimistic about the day ahead.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	6. Chapter 6

Mercury wasn’t used to having a partner who wasn’t Emerald, but he figured he could get used to it if it was Yang. She was damn good at what she did. Fun company, too.

He didn’t need to lift a finger as they visited his ‘friends’; Yang could handle it all herself, and he was impressed with how easily she determined her plan of attack, how she knew who needed scaring and who needed flattering almost instantly. He still swore he did it better – his way was much quicker – but he couldn’t deny she was talented, and he did enjoy watching her work.

“This is the place?”

Unfortunately, he had to do more than watch _,_ and for _free_ as well. Two days later and they were looking up at an unimposing shop front, and Yang was verbalising her wonder at how a cute little place could be home to such a nefarious drug deal, peering in through the dusty windows. Mercury gave a small shrug. In his experience, it was always the ‘cute little places’.

Yang held the handle.

“When he finds out I didn’t kill him, he’ll be after me too, you know.”

He wasn’t particularly worried about Thyme, not really – he tended to be able to handle whatever was thrown at him - but the number of people who wanted him dead rose every day, and he really had to start drawing the line somewhere. He expected Yang to laugh, or to roll her eyes, but to his surprise she clasped his jaw between her hands instead and brought him down for a lingering kiss.

“Thank you,” she said when she pulled away, genuinely, and he grunted in reply, not knowing what else to say.

The sign on the door read ‘open’, but when they entered the tiny bell rang out to no response. It was empty, suspiciously so for one in the afternoon. Yang carefully closed the door behind her and shared a glance with Mercury. He knew the look: it meant _something isn’t right,_ and he nodded in agreement.

Umber was supposed to be arriving soon. From what they could gather he had been given an opportunity to open up his trade to Atlas, where students were under even more pressure to perform well no matter what the cost. It sounded like a legitimate enough business strategy, and he found no reason to question it, nor to wonder why he would have chosen that shop in particular to make his deal. Criminals chose weird little places like that all the time.

Now he was beginning to feel some doubt.

“How do you know Thyme, again?” Yang asked, leaning over the counter to check behind it. He walked up and down the aisles, scowling.

“Met him in a bar in Vale. He offered me the money there and then.”

“Hmm.” It was a hum of judgement, of disapproval, masked as one of thought. Said out loud he realised it might not have been the best idea to agree to an assassination with so little information on both the employer and the target. At the time he wasn’t bothered that Thyme knew who he was; he was kind of a big name in certain circles, and many people did. But maybe he should have considered that not everybody who knew who he was wanted to be his friend…

He was almost ready to tell Yang that they should just turn around and leave, but then she spoke again.

“There’s a door back here.”

He turned around in time to see her to barge into it, shoulder first, no questions asked, the way she did most things. The door cracked, and for a moment there was just silence as Yang turned to give him an inquisitive look, and in the next there was nothing but the roar of the explosion. Yang flew across the room and crashed into the wall, grunting at the impact, then didn’t say anything at all.

“Yang!”

A part of him desperately wanted to make sure she was okay, but the more trained, rational part forced his eyes to the window where he saw a flicker of movement. In an instant he made the decision to burst through, to stun the potential attacker or witness, whoever they were, for long enough to take them down. Glass scattered across the sidewalk like raindrops, but there were only two people standing in the street, watching them; he was unsurprised to realise he knew both of them very well.

“Shit. Where’s the girl?” Thyme asked, panic rising in his voice as he shared a look with Umber. Current colleagues. Well, at least Thyme hadn’t lied about that. “The blonde?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mercury answered steadily. “I’m guessing you _don’t_ have my money?”

He went through the obvious questions: what was their scheme? Which of them did he want dead? Were there any more bombs in the shop? What was Thyme’s weapon, his semblance? That last one he should have found out the moment they met, and he was obviously losing his touch, because the more his mind raced to find the answers the more he realised that he’d never even thought to ask the questions. How could he have been so careless?

The pair looked into the shop and then behind them, too, and he guessed that they were only afraid of Yang coming to rescue him. So it was him they wanted. Well, good. He could handle that.

“I don’t like being played, Thyme,” he said, leaning back on one leg and preparing for the fight.

They charged. In seconds the battle was in full swing, with Mercury drawing them further and further away from the shop front until they were half way down the street, tearing through the tarmac with their blows. He swung around the floor on his hands, twisting and firing wildly into his target and employee, until one of them dared to sprint towards him and grab at his leg. He kicked out at Thyme, and almost too late he saw Umber aiming his weapon, and when the grenade exploded he was only inches out of the blast zone, holding Thyme between him and the flames.

That bastard.

He could handle them alone – that wasn’t a problem. They were hunters, but shabby ones, panicking ones. If he hadn’t promised not to kill them it would have been a lot easier, and it no longer occurred to him to go against his word when it came to Yang, even if she was lying under a pile of rubble and couldn’t stop him. That _was_ a problem.

He needn’t have worried about her, because minutes later she was back on her feet, burning gold and rushing into Umber’s back. She took him down to the floor, but Thyme was already recovering from his brush with the fire, and before she could take out her handcuffs she had to roll suddenly to dodge a flurry of throwing knives heading her way. They pierced the concrete, and Mercury was too far away to hear what Yang heard; she scrambled to her feet and turned away from them just before they too exploded with a surprising amount of force, tearing great chunks out of the road.

“You two really like your explosions,” Mercury commented as his foot connected with the distracted Thyme’s head, knocking him to the ground. Yang recovered from the shock of the explosive knives quickly; she launched back into her fight with Umber fist to fist, and he didn’t stand a chance. Even he almost felt sorry for the guy; all too soon he was stumbling, disorientated, and one last blast to the chest sent him to the ground, huffing for breath and struggling like a squashed insect to get back to his feet.

In one last desperate attempt Umber reached into his jacket pocket and Mercury almost darted forwards to stop him, but Yang was closer. She kicked his hand out and stood on it, crushing whatever was clenched there, glaring daggers as he yelped in pain.

“You know, you only technically need Umber,” Mercury said, casually, pressing his foot into Thyme’s throat.

“Bring him here, asshole,” Yang responded predictably.

He dragged Thyme over to meet him with obvious reluctance, and Yang cuffed them together. Prior experience warned them to disarm the pair, too; neither of them felt like being blown up. Again.

“Got anybody who can lend us a car?” Yang asked, dusting herself off, not even looking at the two injured criminals. “You know,” she continued as he gave it some thought. “Somebody who isn’t trying to kill you.”

“Fuck you both,” Thyme croaked from the ground. He couldn’t help himself; he gave Thyme a kick to the stomach that left him gasping for breath. Yang didn’t chastise him.

“What’s the problem? I thought we had a good thing going,” he said, pressing his foot down on his shoulder hard enough to break it if he wanted to, and he really did.

“You killed Slate, you son of a bitch.”

 _Ah, shit._ Revenge. Of course. That made sense.

Yang looked at him, judgementally, and he shrugged his shoulders. It was awkward, because he had no idea who Slate was, and he couldn’t say Thyme was lying because honestly he probably had killed Slate at some point; he’d killed a lot of people.

“You two work together?” Yang cut in, letting Mercury off the hook for the moment.

“Yeah, and we used to be three,” he responded, glaring up at her from the ground. There was so much hate in his eyes, and Umber’s too. They had to have been planning this for a long time. Not very well, but planning it nonetheless.

And you know, for the past six years, Mercury had behaved himself.

Okay. That wasn’t entirely true, but mostly he had only killed low-lives and the competitors of low-lives, and criminals and sometimes even other assassins. He didn’t regret getting any of them; they deserved it, they were bad guys by all standards and nobody ever looked twice at him for disposing of them. He got to kill, and the authorities tended to leave him alone. It was a win-win situation. The only thing he regretted was getting into this stupid situation, and Yang was never going to let him hear the end of it, not in a million years…

“Well, Beacon used to have three more students, as well. So maybe you should keep your mouth shut,” she said, pulling out her scroll.

\--

The sun was setting. Thyme and Umber didn’t attempt to speak again after the first time, when Yang had let Mercury take the wheel and pressed her shotgun arm into Thyme’s head, hard: she really didn’t have to keep him alive, she said, even though Mercury knew she would. The car journey dragged on, and neither of them spoke much either. It had been a long week.

“You’re not good at intel, are you?” Yang asked after a long stretch of silence, keeping her eyes firmly on the road.

“What?” Mercury had been staring out of the window, watching the scenery go by. “Without me we wouldn’t have them.” He jerked his head to the pair in the back, connected by the handcuffs, only half conscious.

“You got lucky. Besides, what about the whole…” she trailed off and looked into the rear mirror, mouthing the words ‘maiden thing’ when she caught his eye. He sighed. “Do you even know how much trouble that caused?”

“That was Cinder’s ‘intel’, not mine.”

“Well, you really need to start checking your sources.”

“Is that concern I hear?” he smirked, rolling his head to the side to face her. She didn’t look back.

“Believe it or not, Mercury, I like you. I don’t want you getting yourself killed because you can’t be bothered to find out who you’re working for.”

Mercury hummed thoughtfully and carried on watching her as she drove. They fell back into silence. She was still covered in little bits of debris and ash, in her hair and on her skin and on her clothes. Her jacket had been singed, and her prosthetic was blackened in places it wasn’t before. There were bruises all over from the past few days, from her jaw to her knees. She was still unbelievably pretty.

“Stop it,” she said when he had looked at her for long enough.

“Stop what?” he asked, grin splitting across his face.

“I’m trying to drive.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re _looking_ at me.”

Someone in the backseat groaned.

Ah, well. They deserved it.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I swear I'm just in this for the hate sex," I swear, forgetting that I'm incapable of adding a little fluff here and there. If this even counts as fluff...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I played with this a _lot_ (I finished the whole story before I uploaded the first chapter for once) and really couldn't decide how to close it off at all. I hope this ends up being satisfying!

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

Yang wrinkled her nose and rolled onto her front, pulling the arms around her with her, ignoring the sound.

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

One arm removed itself and reached for the bedside table, taking hold of her scroll and dropping it in front of her, a sure indicator that she should probably answer it before Mercury smashed it to pieces.

But she was so comfy.

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

With a quiet sigh she answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Hi Yang!” the voice on the other end called, wide awake and cheerful.

“Hey Rubes,” Yang yawned out. She freed herself from Mercury’s grasp and sat up in bed, stretching and rolling her shoulders, taking a glance at the sun pouring in from the open window.

“Did you just get up?” her younger sister giggled over the line. “It’s two in the afternoon. Don’t you have _any_ work to do?”

“Wow, rude,” Yang responded, grinning. “You don’t know what we went through this week.”

“We?”

“Good going, Blondie,” came Mercury’s voice, half muffled from the pillows, but apparently still loud enough for Ruby to hear.

“Wait, is Mercury there with you? At Patch?”

Yang cringed.

Yeah, he was. She’d actually made him get out the car and walk there before she took Umber and Thyme to Qrow, because God only knew what would happen if her uncle ever found out about them (Umber and Thyme had been threatened substantially to keep their mouths shut, but Yang was pretty sure she could deflect suspicion from her uncle if worst came to worst). But that had been four days ago and he was still there, rummaging through her things, making snarky comments about her fairy lights, sleeping in her bed, and it was only because her dad was away on his own mission that she’d let him stay…

… But honestly, having him there was better than she could ever have expected because for once neither of them _did_ have anything to do, and it always startled her how much she actually liked Mercury when they were alone, how much they understood each other, how well they got along when they had a moment to talk. Who else could she joke about prosthetic maintenance in one breath and have a semi-serious conversation about bad parents in the next? And he might have rolled his eyes at her ‘embarrassing’ sense of humour, but once he slipped out a dreadful pun and they’d broke into an hour long battle because neither of them could bear to lose, and even when they weren’t torturing each other with terrible jokes he had a weird way of making her snort with laughter, and sometimes she even managed to get a real laugh out of him (though he always tried to hide it). Six years and she was only just beginning to wonder if they could really carry on pretending this was a casual thing for the sake of their stupid egos.

“… Yang? Are you still there? Don’t let him touch my comics!”

“Don’t tell her about the ones I threw in the fire,” Mercury said, loud enough for Ruby to hear and enough to break her out of her thoughts.

“Is he joking? He better be joking!”

Yang sighed. “He’s trying,” she said, shoving Mercury’s back and hearing him snort. “What’s up, anyway?”

She could almost hear Ruby blink and shake her head, clearing away the rage at the thought of him messing with her stuff, and it made Yang smile. “Oh, right! Mission accomplished! We’re on our way back to Patch now.”

“Yay! How long will you be?” Yang asked, taking another look out the window.

“Mid-day tomorrow maybe? Are you going to explain how Mercury ended up at our house, by the way?”

“I’ll explain when you get here. It’s kind of a long story.”

They ended their call with the usual _goodbyes_ and _I love yous_ and Yang flopped back down into the bed, curling up around Mercury’s back and seriously debating going back to sleep, but a better idea occurred to her as she walked her fingers up to his shoulders.

She rolled him onto his back, and he gave a pretend whine of sleepy protest even as she straddled his hips and nibbled his ear. She pressed her lips along his cheek to his mouth until he kissed back lazily and slowly slipped his hands up her bare back; they were warm with sleep and gentle, for once, and when he took charge and flipped her over him the movement was steady and controlled. Their mouths were still locked together when her back hit the bed and he climbed half on top of her, and with one leg he parted hers while he lay on his side, looking at her.

He moved his hands over her stomach and hipbones, feather light, and dropped them down to her inner thighs, where he made shapes on her skin until her breath quickened and she squirmed with discomfort. Slowly he moved upwards to her clit, where he pressed lightly and rubbed in small circles like she’d taught him she liked until she was rocking against his hand and chewing on her lower lip. He took the hint and moved his fingers faster; she buried her face in his shoulder and moaned, lifting her hips up from the bed, and she could feel him getting harder by the second against her thigh, too.

A horrible thought somehow occurred to her through the pleasure and she squeezed her hand around Mercury’s wrist.

“Don’t stop,” she warned pre-emptively, though it didn’t sound as threatening when it came out so stuttered and shaky.

Mercury grinned. “Would I ever be so cruel?” he asked, voice rich with mock offence, and in response Yang held onto him even tighter.

He wasn’t cruel. She came digging her nails into the flesh of his arm and his wrist, breath caught in her throat, twitching and shaking against him. After just a few seconds she rolled to face him, keeping his thigh between hers, and she pressed their mouths together once more. This time the kiss was more heated, passionate, and in no time at all they were pushing against each other, fighting to be on top. Yang had the disadvantage of having already climaxed, however, and Mercury gained the upper hand, pinning her by her shoulders and biting down on her lip smugly.

The bed creaked when he pushed inside of her, and over their pants and groans she could hear the headboard smacking the wall repeatedly, chipping into the wood. She locked her legs around his hips and dragged her fingers through his hair; he thrusted harder, hard enough that she worried the bed might collapse beneath them, but still she climaxed a second time, cursing and squeezing her eyes closed. Seconds later Mercury’s hips stilled with his cock deep inside her, and he came too, sinking his head into her shoulder.

“You…” Yang said, before realising she was too out of breath to continue. Mercury was heavy on top of her, and she gave him a shove; he slid out of her and flopped onto his back, sighing. “You should probably go tonight.”

He peered at her for a moment, thinking for once, before he responded: “Sure.”

“Ruby’s back tomorrow. And dad’s probably going to be back pretty soon after.”

“I get it,” he assured her, though she was suddenly guiltily questioning her timing. Even after all this time, there was still a large part of her that warned her not to get too comfortable, and she knew it was the same in him. She kind of hated it.

“Em’s probably dying without me anyway,” Mercury said with a stretch, finally climbing out of the bed. Yang laughed.

“Probably selling all your stuff already,” she grinned.

“She wouldn’t dare.”

\--

A few hours later they stood in the doorway ready to say goodbye, but those were not the first words to leave Mercury’s lips.

“Just curious, but what would you tell your dad if he found out?” They came out a little quickly, somewhat rehearsed, and Yang wondered what he was really trying to ask.

She rubbed her arm, nails scratching against the metal. “I guess I’d tell him my boyfriend’s a dangerous criminal who once helped start a war and framed me in front of all of Remnant, and then have a very awkward conversation,” she decided on.

“Boyfriend, huh?” He honed in on the word, raising his eyebrows. Yang inhaled through her nose, immediately preparing to go on the defence, to say it was better than trying to explain, but Mercury spoke again before she could. “No – that works,” he said, too casually.

Yang looked at him steadily, considering him, deflating. “Maybe I’ll talk to him about it when he gets back. I mean, it’s probably best he hears from me, right?”

Mercury shrugged as if it made no difference to him, and Yang’s lip twitched at the implications of the conversation, and Mercury rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, and they were both idiots trying not to smile like stupid little kids instead of a huntress and an assassin.

God, it was going to be a _conversation_ with a capital ‘C’ _,_ and she definitely had to start thinking of a better way to phrase it than what she’d joked to Mercury, but it would be a relief to _finally_ have it out in the open. And to have a word for it. Maybe then things would be easier.

When he finally left a bird swooped down from the rooftop, and Yang watched it walk along the footpath with idle interest, distracted by her thoughts, until suddenly it was her uncle, arms crossed, expression guarded. It took a moment for the realisation to set in, and when it did she stood up bolt-right, mouth hanging open, a mixture of horrified and rightfully offended at the invasion of privacy.

“Fuck,” Yang said, in unison with Qrow’s; “Explain.” 

That Conversation was definitely happening sooner than she’d liked.

 

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Thank you to everyone who read all this. I hope it hasn't veered off into being too out of character or unbelievable, and I reeeeally hope you enjoyed it! Thanks again!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, really! <3


End file.
